Happy National Newspaper Week

When was the last time you were excited about opening your mailbox?

When was the last time you actually heard both sides of a story?

When was the last time you felt connected to your community?

This week, Oct. 5-11, is National Newspaper Week – actually the 85th annual observance of the event, which is a promotion of the newspaper industry in the U.S.

In a increasingly divided world, local newspapers, and specifically this local newspaper, is a means of connecting this community over things we all care about, and guess what, those similarities actually outnumber the differences.

Connections like ... ... what our kids and grandkids are up to.

... how our local leaders are spending our tax dollars.

.... ways to get involved and support local organizations and businesses.

... inspiring stories of local people that just might inspire you to be better too.

In a few weeks we here at The Fayette County Record are going to celebrate the beginning of our 104th year of continuous publication.

We’re one of the oldest businesses in Fayette County and we aren’t going anywhere.

Last year we learned we were the 23rd largest newspaper in the state in terms of paid readers per issue.

And now via our threetimes- a-week email newsletter, and social media outlets, we’re reaching more and more eyeballs than at any time in our history.

But the price of newsprint, and postage and computer software keep going up – and that’s a big reason newspapers around the nation are dying almost on a weekly basis.

So while we appreciate the thousands of you that subscribe to this paper or pick up copies on newsstands around the region twice a week, we’d love it as a way to celebrate National Newspaper Week if you would try to introduce this twice-weekly newspaper to someone who hasn’t experienced it yet. I think anyone who lives in or loves Fayette County would appreciate a gift subscription to The Fayette County Record – in print or online.

A newspaper subscription is a gift, like that infamous jelly-of-the-month club, that “keeps on giving the whole year.”

Or maybe give us a call and spread some positivity via a thank you ad or a complimentary letter to the editor to someone who deserves it. Or submit a story to us about something important to you that we didn’t cover.

Every little bit you can do to help this newspaper helps us do our job better of informing citizens, keeping the powerful accountable, fostering community connection and being a force for local economic development.

“Were it left to me to decide if we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism…” – Richard Kluger “A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district... are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty.”

– Benjamin Franklin

“Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy,” – Walter Cronkite